Survey of a cinematic lyricist

5 Dec 2012 to 27 Jan 2013

Jonas Mekas

Film-maker, artist and poet Jonas Mekas is a leading figure of avant-garde and independent cinema.

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The Serpentine presented an exhibition of Jonas Mekas's film, video and photographic works from throughout his remarkable and prolific sixty-year career to date. Mekas brings a poet's sensibility to the diary film style that permeates his work. Mekas' vision is unique in its ability to capture personal moments of beauty, celebration and joy. Developing his diaristic film style in the 1960s, he has become best known for his 'film diaries' in which he recorded, with great sensitivity, his day-to-day activities as well as those of his peers from the film and arts community in New York.

This exhibition surveyed Mekas's work with moving images, poetry and sound, presenting a selection of film and video works dating from the 1950s through to the time of the exhibition. The show included the world premiere of Mekas's new feature-length film, presented as an immersive installation. Stills, film portraits of friends and family and ephemera also punctuated the Serpentine's spaces, offering a fascinating insight into Mekas's life and work.

"I want to celebrate the small forms of cinema, the lyrical forms, the poem, the watercolour, etude, sketch, postcard, arabesque, bagatelle and little 8mm songs. I am standing in the middle of the information highway and laughing, because a butterfly on a little flower somewhere just fluttered its wings, and I know that the whole course of history will drastically change because of that flutter. A super-8 camera just made a little soft buzz somewhere, on New York's Lower East Side, and the world will never be the same" - Jonas Mekas

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Jonas Mekas

On his arrival in New York in 1949, Jonas Mekas (b.1922, Lithuania) bought his first Bolex camera and began to record brief moments of the world around him. He quickly became a central figure in the burgeoning arts community, alongside friends and collaborators such as Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol and film-makers Kenneth Anger and Maya Deren. A tireless champion of the independent and avant-garde film movements, he wrote the 'Movie Journal' column in Village Voice, set up and edited Film Culture magazine with his brother Adolfas, and founded the Film-Makers' Cooperative and Anthology Film Archives.

Mekas's work in turn has inspired many artists and film-makers to follow in his footsteps. Mike Figgis, Jim Jarmusch, Harmony Korine and Martin Scorsese, among many others, have cited Mekas as a key influence.

Mekas's films and archive material have been exhibited extensively throughout the world, including at Documenta 11; the Venice Biennale 2005; the Whitney Museum of American Art and MoMA PS1, New York; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Baltic Art Center, Sweden; and the Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo.